Still locked in frozen silence, Polly saw her father’s face redden.
‘Now, you listen to me—’ Clearly intimidated by Damon’s cold, controlled fury, he momentarily lost some of his bluster. ‘I’m no coward. I’m not afraid of you.’
‘Well, you should be.’ Damon’s voice was silky-smooth, his soft tone a thousand times more dangerous than the older man’s empty bluster. ‘You abandoned your business without thought or care for the future job security of your employees and you did the same with your daughter.’
‘I did not abandon her. Polly’s not a kid. She’s capable of looking after herself.’
‘This wasn’t a question of cooking herself a meal and getting on with life. You left her to the mercy of those greedy animals you laughingly call a board, all of whom could have been dismissed for misuse of company funds, not to mention sexual harassment, but even worse than that—’ the control finally snapped and Damon’s voice thickened with anger ‘—you left her to deal with me. By herself. No support from anyone.’ Each word thumped into her father like a rock and Polly saw him shrivel.
Torn between her love for two men, she stepped forward, forcing the words through stiff lips. ‘Damon, that’s enough.’
Damon ignored her. ‘Was that your plan? Instead of standing up to me like a man, you left your daughter alone and unprotected in the hope that the lion wouldn’t attack? Or have you just completely abdicated your responsibilities as a father?’
‘Polly’s good at her job. And she’s good with people.’ But her father’s bluster was fading and he glanced warily at Polly. ‘You handled him, didn’t you?’
Damon exploded, first in Greek and then in English. ‘She is twenty-four years old and doesn’t have a ruthless bone in her body and yet you abandoned her to be eaten alive by someone of my reputation.’
‘I didn’t think you’d hurt her.’
Damon’s laugh was layered with contempt and disgust. ‘You were relying on that. You ran. And you let your defenceless daughter deal with the fall-out. You disgust me. Now, get the hell out of my home.’
‘Now, wait a minute—’ Her father stumbled over his words. ‘Pol isn’t defenceless. She’s a tough thing.’
‘She’s had to be! When have you ever stood up for her or helped her? When, in the whole of her life, have you ever been there for her?!’
‘I gave her a home when her mother walked out.’
Damon lifted a hand, clenched it into a fist and then lowered it again. ‘Don’t say another word,’ he warned in a thickened tone. ‘Not a word if you want to walk out of here in the same condition you walked in.’
‘Stop it!’ Finally dragged from her own trauma, Polly stepped between the two men. ‘Stop it, both of you! That’s enough.’ She felt sick inside. So sick that she wanted to crawl into a corner and hide there. Although she knew that everything Damon said was the truth, it didn’t stop her loving her father. Life wasn’t that simple, was it? ‘Dad, where’s Arianna?’
‘She’s back at the house. It’s her home now. We’re married. We did in secret because we both knew he—’ he stabbed an accusing finger towards Damon ‘—would go off the deep end.’
‘Married?’ Polly couldn’t hide her dismay and a flash of real fear chilled her all the way through as she anticipated how Damon would react to that less than welcome news. ‘Oh, Dad.’
Her father bristled. ‘I
f I care for a woman, I don’t want to just make some sort of sex trophy of her—like him.’ He glared at Damon. ‘He has plenty of women. He just doesn’t marry any of them. What does that say about him?’
‘It says that I can tell the difference between lust and love.’ Damon spoke through his teeth, his effort to maintain control visible in the pumped muscle of his bare chest and shoulders. ‘It says that my decision-making is ruled by my brain and not my testosterone levels.’
Sensing the extreme volatility of his mood, Polly was terrified he was going to lose it. ‘I think you’d better leave, Dad,’ she said hastily, urging him towards the door.
‘Not without you.’ Her father dug his heels in and Damon breathed deeply.
‘She’s staying here. With me. She’s mine now.’ It was a statement of pure male possession and Polly stilled, hot tears scalding the back of her eyes, knowing that those words were spoken to aggravate her father.
What other explanation was there? Damon had already told her he didn’t want a relationship—didn’t want commitment or more responsibility. And she knew, as no doubt he did, that nothing would upset her father more than watching her choose Damon over him.
Damon saw their relationship as another weapon to use in the defence of his sister.
‘Wait there,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll get dressed.’
Damon turned slowly, an expression of raw incredulity stamped on his spectacularly handsome face as he looked at her. ‘You’re going with him?’
Polly couldn’t breathe. Her mind was a mess and the pain in her chest felt as though someone had ripped her apart with burning knives. ‘I don’t have a choice. He’s my dad.’
‘Of course you have a choice.’ Damon’s face was unusually pale. ‘Theé mou, tell me that you don’t believe any of that garbage he just spouted.’